


Kiss/Kill Switch

by Ololon



Category: Spin Trilogy - Chris Moriarty
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-13 16:24:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12987888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ololon/pseuds/Ololon
Summary: Learning to live with the intraface, and each other...and all the each others that come with Cohen.





	Kiss/Kill Switch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Toft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toft/gifts).



> I've tried very hard to include a lot of your suggestions here, but feel like I left a lot out, so I hope you enjoy this. It's set a few months after the first book, Spin State. I always thought it would be interesting to see how the relationship between Li and Cohen develops after that pivotal point. It's not explicit, but rated mature for some of the concepts, and Li's occasionally colourful language. One thing I do find confusing in the books is all the realspace/streamspace locations. I hope I haven't garbled them too badly.
> 
> Italic text is "speaking" across the intraface, unless for emphasis.

** Kiss/Kill Switch. **

 

It hadn’t been the most auspicious start to the week. First there had been _that_ conversation.

“Aren’t we supposed to have a honeymoon period before we start arguing? In fact, aren’t we supposed to get married, then have the honeymoon period and _then_ start arguing?”

“I’m not marrying you Cohen.”

“Well then you could at least stop arguing.”

“At last count,” Li said, throwing her hands up, “There were at least twenty other people in this relationship! Your whole _self_ is one big argument!”

“You see, you fit right in.” That caught her unawares; even surprised a brief smile out of her. But it had gone downhill and ended, as things usually did, with her slamming the mental doors on the intraface and ignoring Cohen. And looking up joining the French Foreign Legion.

Then Cohen’s router had decided he couldn’t take it any more and upped sticks and dissociated himself from the Emergent AI. Which meant the intraface had been…buggy, which Catherine still insisted was mostly to blame for the…incident.

* * *

Li heard the person in the kitchen even as she came down the stairs; whoever it was was being quiet, but not that quiet.

 _Did you leave that damn conservatory door unlocked again Cohen? What is the point of having a guard at the front if the back is open. And also just basically glass….Cohen?_ Fine, then, still sulking, the giant prima donna. Li could handle this herself. Easily. She pulled out her gun and swung into the kitchen.

“Who the hell are you?” Harsh, with her Beretta trained right-between-the-eyes, deliberately intimidating. It was always safer to aim at the centre of mass, of course, but even a non-enhanced human could probably hit the woman sat at their kitchen table from here. And Li was far, far better than that. Her target gulped convulsively, and almost dropped the orange juice she was holding – real orange juice! From Cohen’s fridge!

“I’m not asking again,” Li said.

“I – I just – I just came about the job!” she stammered, half-raising her hands, “He said I could wait here!”

“What job and who?”

“Cohen! The AI! I was supposed to interview with him in person but he got held up.” She was a stunning young woman, which Li had noticed but not deigned to notice until now…which was the precise moment she remembered Cohen saying something about needing to find a new organic interface…she pulled up files, scanning IDs. Then she put the gun down.

“Oh right. Sorry.” And where the fuck was Cohen anyway? All she was getting was this grating tinkly piano music on a loop.

_Wait, did you just put me on HOLD?_

 She began to open her mouth, to try to begin to patch things (never her strong point) but the woman had already bolted out the patio doors.

<Catherine? Sorry, got held up with that damned ALEF meeting and it was taking up all my bandwidth now that I’m routing…what did you just do?>

“Shit.”

 

* * *

 _Remind me why I agreed to this,_ Li said, across the shared intraface, for about, oh, the thirteenth time. For an answer, Cohen sent an image across their shared workspace; Hy Cohen the youth, bouncing his football up and down and chanting “ _Are we nearly there yet?”_ The image rapidly decohered before she could come up with something suitably caustic in reply.

“Not again,” she muttered, out loud.

“Well, quite,” Cohen replied; he was shunting through Roland, “Which I think rather well answers your question.”

“It’s not my fault your old router flounced off. It hated humans. It was basically speciesist.” Cohen decided to bite his metaphorical tongue on that one. “And it’s also not my fault Chiara got that new movie role and that Roland’s got his med school exams coming up and needs more study time.”

“Well it is your fault that new face left, or should I say, fled in terror.”

“You’re not going to let that go, are you?” He smiled sweetly through Roland’s face.

“Of course not. It was possibly the funniest thing that’s happened since you moved in, and it’s got some stiff competition.” She aimed a kick at him with her heavy soldier’s boot: hard, he noted, but slow enough that he could dodge.

“Well, here we are.” In front of an oversized, overdone synthetic oak door.

“Oh happy day.”

* * *

It would be fair to say that the year since Compson’s World, since the intraface, had been…eventful. An impartial observer might have assumed that the intraface would have smoothed out the potential misunderstandings in a relationship, but then, that person probably hadn’t met Catherine Li, Cohen reflected. Li had a quite spectacular ability to misunderstand whenever it suited her, and, moreover, had somehow carried over that closed-off self-protective inches-thick shell of hers into the intraface. Just because it had, at least in part, merged them into a combined entity, such that Li, much as she might not admit it, was just one of several sentient systems that made up the vast Emergent AI known as Cohen, didn’t mean she couldn’t be her own right royal pain in the ass, as Hy Cohen’s mother had used to say. Which was probably why the AI running his router had dissociated itself, and Cohen and his various associated sub-systems (24 today; running necessarily light) were struggling to handle the traffic.

<Testing> Cohen sent.

<That’s getting old>

<Hmm, well, at least we can get regular interface traffic without too much difficulty. Though I must say it feels like driving a Robin Reliant after a Lamborghini>

<A what? Never mind. You still haven’t explained why this involves us meeting with a Ringside AI. You know they’re all sub-contracted to DefenseNet>

<Because I need a favour, which involves doing a favour, which _may_ result in my finding someone willing to come on board as my new router>

Catherine snorted indelicately at that, glancing incuriously around the room: another Zona Angel mansion made for a machine that never really lived in it. Although, of course, most of big Emergent AIs shunted through humans when it came to doing business with them. Or pleasure.

<He’s late. Why did we have to come here in person anyway? Couldn’t we meet in streamspace?>

An elegant roll of Roland’s shoulders.

<His idea. Besides, it is literally only around the block, you know>

They sat and waited. Cohen could literally feel Li’s impatience: if it wasn’t for soldiering, then she was like a trapped tiger in a cage. Any minute now she’d be pacing. Or leaving. Sure enough, she sprang to her feet, arms tightly folded, eyes scanning the room, and the doors coming off it.

“You can’t join the Foreign Legion, you know,” he said, knowing, even as he did, that it would antagonise her, but unable to stop himself, somehow. It earnt him a hard look.

“What have I said about spying on me?”

“Oh come on! You left the search history all over our shared workspace.” Her jaw tightened.

“Why can’t I then?” He floundered a second, having expected a continued frontal attack.

“Because, my dear, I saw those uniforms and they have the most _terrible_ hats.” She made an indelicate noise at that, but flung herself back down in a chair, arms still folded, scowl locked in place. They waited a few minutes longer. Cohen was carrying out conversations and transactions with probably half a hundred other systems and, in a few cases, people, Catherine sat and scuffed a steel toe-capped boot across the fine marble floor. She frowned.

“It’s dusty.”

“Pardon?”

“I said it’s _dusty_.” She felt Cohen’s incredulity.

“Since when did you care about – “ But Catherine had already sprung to her feet.

“Come on, this isn’t right.”

“Oh god, she’s off,” muttered under his breath. He hurried after her, nonetheless.

They found – someone – in the master bedroom on the top floor. A young man sprawled across the bed. A handsome young man, with olive skin and curling brown hair. Long lashes, Li noted, feeling Cohen’s mutual interest – somewhat less hormonal than her own.

“He the face?” she asked, frowning, then took a cautious step closer, hand going to her pocket subconsciously. There had been no guard at the door either; nobody to confiscate her beloved Beretta. “He looks dehydrated.” Cohen was frowning.

“He’s got almost as much wetware in his head as you have.”

“How do you know - ?” A moment’s pause – Cohen admired how she perfectly stilled, like a cat before pouncing – and then a decisive step forward and she was patting the man on the cheek, none too gently, and commanding him to wake up. It didn’t work.

<Let’s knock on their _other_ door> Cohen suggested, across the intraface.

<That was a quite appalling innuendo>

<It most certainly was not>

There was little resistance here either: they were admitted into a streamspace copy of the bedroom with only the most minor interrogation of their protocols. But it wasn’t just the young man here. There was another – quite literally another, a twin of the man on the real bed – they were lying holding each other. Li felt briefly embarrassed, but it wasn’t as if they were even _doing_ anything. They were just staring into each other’s eyes. On second thoughts, that _was_ embarrassing.

“ _Ahem_ ,” Cohen said, pointedly, and the two young men rolled lazily apart.

“Oh hello,” they said, in unison.

“You can cut that creepy shit out right now,” Li said, shortly, which got her an exasperated look from Cohen, although she could tell he was amused.

“What my dear lady is trying to say, with her usual diplomacy, is that this isn’t _usually_ how we conduct business meetings,” Cohen remarked, smoothly.

“Oh, sorry, lost track of time a bit,” one of the men replied.

<Is that the AI? I can’t tell> Li commented. The fierce frown was back. God, but Cohen loved that frown.

“I was wondering when someone else would get around to trying the intraface,” he said.

* * *

Li watched whilst the young man – the original one, whose name was…Matthias? Matthew? – something like that – emerged freshly showered in realspace and set about his dinner with the determination of someone who had apparently forgotten to eat for over a day.

“Run that one by me again,” she stated, picking at her own food somewhat moodily, and trying not to look as intensely curious as she felt. Cohen, languishing on the sofa with one of Roland’s slender arms draped along the back – gave her a sidelong look. The man shrugged.

“It was good money,” he said, “ _Really_ good money. I didn’t know it would quite that _involved._ ”

“Didn’t read the small print eh, er, Matt - ”

<Matteo> supplied Cohen.

“Matt,” she said. The man frowned, and then his expression shifted, just slightly. Li, used to the way Cohen could slide on and off shunt, was nevertheless disturbed.

“I don’t think I have to justify this to _you,_ ” the AI said, sniffily, “ _You’re_ not effectively an indentured servant with DefenseNet. You know the Consortium’s been trying to break through the quarantine around Compson’s world – which I might add you both have no small responsibility for! – well guess who they decided to send on what was supposed to be a little reconnaissance mission?” Li couldn’t hold back a disbelieving snort at that.

“That _stinks_ ,” she said, to the AI’s coolly raised eyebrow.

“Well, quite. I wasn’t about to go ratting out another Emergent – even if they _are_ Consortium – and I was certainly not about to go and let the powers that be activate my mandatory feedback loop if they decided I had stepped out of line.”

“So you got yourself an intraface,” Cohen said, “Because a feedback loop on an intrafaced human/AI pair would kill them both, so the technology overrides it, which is why ALEF wanted it all along, of course. I’m actually more impressed that you had the _nous_ to find yourself a human willing to do this who had the security clearance for the mission and wasn’t worried about their superior’s disapproval.”

“Not to mention someone with enough wetware in their head,” Li prodded.

 _If he’s a soldier, I’m a ballet dancer,_ she sent to Cohen, over the link, and felt his amusement ripple out.

“I paid for that. He’s a technical specialist.” _That_ covered a multitude of sins, “He’s also General Minh’s nephew.”

"Christ." Cohen started laughing.

“So what happened?” Li asked.

“Nothing. The mission was dead before it even started, but we’d already activated the intraface and…” Cohen took a delicate sip of wine from his glass.

“Never thought you were that interested in humans,” he said, a hint of mirth still rolling under the surface. Li, by contrast, was out of patience.

“So, what: you came home and disappeared down the damned rabbit hole?”

 _I gave you a real paper copy of that book years ago and I know for a fact you used it as a doorstop,_ Cohen sent.

_That just says what I thought of it, not that I didn't read it. For the record, it was the biggest load of -_

“We got bored,” the AI said, flatly, which made Cohen start laughing again. The AI shot him a dirty look. “And, as you may have noticed, we keep getting…stuck.”

“And you want _my_ help to get…unstuck?” The AI sounded almost apologetic then.

“Preferably both of you…”

 _Oh Jesus,_ and it wasn't clear which one of them thought it first.

* * *

Cohen was humming to himself on the way back, which meant he was pleased.

“All right,” she said out loud, “I’ll bite. You obviously thought it was worth three whole hours straightening out the godawful entangled mess those two had gotten themselves into, but from where I’m standing: that’s three hours of my life I’m not getting back.” _And I've lost plenty of hours of my life._ She shuddered again, at the memory of going back into the virtual environment the AI had created; so much more chaotic than the memory palace Cohen had carefully constructed. (There was something to be said, after all, for living with a neat freak, she admitted to herself, grudgingly).

“Well, most of my meetings with other AIs aren’t much less weird, to be honest,” but she was only half-listening.

“Matteo…” she began, and didn’t know how to carry on. But she tried, because it was Cohen. And she felt that _concentration_ which meant she had his undivided attention. “Those memories…that they kept getting lost in. There were so many of them. And the childhood ones!”

“Powerfully evocative, strangely vague,” Cohen said, but not as flippantly as he might have, “Most childhood memories are.” He didn’t say more. They both knew she was thinking of all that she’d lost, and of the things she _did_ remember – so many she didn’t want to.

 _Humans remember things for a reason,_ he said, _But they also forget for a reason._ She felt the warmth of Roland’s hand in her own.

“Why didn’t it work properly?” she asked, after a moment more, “We both know that you can operate an intraface better than any other Emergent. But that AI – he had an affective loop system built in, after all.”

“ _Bootlegged_ in, would be a more accurate term,” Cohen corrected, “He didn’t grow out of it, like I did. Having all those human thoughts, memories and, of course, the _feelings,_ I imagine must have been a bit of a shock. And, evidently, a fascination. Unlike me, he has never lived a human life.”

“ _I_ never lived a human life, Cohen.”

“Well, we can argue the semantics on that all day. But you’re right: for all the wetware, Matteo could never intraface as well as someone like you could.”

“A construct, you mean,”

“Not just that,” he said, quickly. He meant well, and perhaps, in the end, he was right. She sensed, through the intraface, the drift of his thoughts.

“You’re going to say something to make me want to hit you, aren’t you?” That rippling laughter she loved so well.

_Face it, dear, we’re made for each other._

So she hit him. But not so that it hurt.

* * *

Later, much later, as Li lay in a virtual version of Chiara’s arms in streamspace, she ventured an opinion.

“You know what, as much of a pain in the neck as it is, I think I’d rather you carried on with using organic interfaces. I do _not_ want to end up like those two, literally disappeared up their own arses.” Chiara – Cohen – laughed – trailing tickling fingers down Li’s side, which she fended off half-heartedly.

“Well, since you scared off the last potential face, we’ll have to stick to the virtual for the next couple of weeks until Roland gets back, unless you want me to hire a random.” Li gave him a sly look.

“Depends how cute they are.” Then a sudden thought occurred to her.

 “Why _did_ we go there again?” she asked, “You never actually answered my question.”

“Out of the goodness of my heart,” he said, which he managed to make sound quite dramatic, in Chiara’s rich contralto. She poked him in the virtual ribs.

“Be serious.”

“Oh really Catherine, much as I have now come around – at least a bit – to your way of thinking regarding privacy, and your determined way of keeping your identity so very self-contained, or should I say even _firewalled_ at times – I can’t believe you haven’t noticed.”

“I’ve noticed the intraface is a damn sight less buggy this afternoon, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“Favours for favours,” he replied, airily. "That AI knows a lot of people through DefenceNet. People who might want to hire some quality soldiers now and then, not just security grunt work." He'd said that last quickly, and it earnt him a look. "Well, better than the Foreign Legion anyway." Li sighed, got up, and, with a pointed look at Chiara lying so picturesquely on the bed (she nearly went back, but her pride prevented it), slung a gown over her shoulders and padded out into the hallway. The memory palace materialised fully around her.

_Why do you have to make the floors so damn cold?_

_Verisimilitude._

_Verywhat? Never mind._ She reached the study, opened the door, peered in – nothing there, but the desk was a lot tidier. Frowning, she went to the wall and pulled open an access panel that hadn't been there before. Inside the wall, exaggerated circuitry hummed and flashed tiny lights. Probably Cohen's idea of an ancient computer, dragged up from some half-recalled lab of his very early years.

_Oh, I see. You got yourself a new router._

_Not quite. I persuaded the AI acting as my decomposer to take on a new role._ Li considered that. Cohen’s decomposer was a fully sentient Ringside AI, albeit one that was doing this job on the side for the ready money, being far more concerned with its own mathematical research, as a general rule.

<Router/decomposer, at your service> chipped in another voice, on cue.

<Hello> Li said, drily, then slammed the panel shut and padded back to Chiara.

“He’s very good,” Cohen said, “And he happened to have two subsystems tangled up in that mess we just disentangled back there. _And_ he likes you, which is saying something.” Li didn’t respond to that: she was busy flinging her gown off and climbing on to the bed.

“Thirty-seven associated systems on a good day,” she muttered, straddling Cohen, who looked decidedly interested in this turn of events, “At least three regular organic interfaces who are their own people on their day off, and now I get another sentient AI on board dealing with all the traffic in this chaotic system.” Her mouth descended onto virtual Chiara’s, but not before she murmured:

“Just how many of us are going to be in this marriage anyway?” And felt Cohen’s delighted brushfire laughter lick across the intraface and echo in her mind.

 

 END.

 


End file.
